


Love And Grief Go Hand In Hand

by GideonGraystairs



Series: Tumblr Fics [4]
Category: The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Comforting Magnus Bane, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Loss, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 03:08:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10935729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GideonGraystairs/pseuds/GideonGraystairs
Summary: A pause, long enough to have him wondering if maybe he'd crawled out the bathroom window to be alone or simply moved to the bathtub, away from the door and Magnus's tangent concern.Then, "I'm fine." It was quiet, weak, full of tears and the twisting memories of a little boy's body burning in a fire made for grieving. Nevertheless, it was something.





	Love And Grief Go Hand In Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [Tumblr](http://raphaelsantiago.co.vu) 07/01/2015. I vaguely remember really enjoying writing this.
> 
> Requested by Anonymous as a line of dialogue prompt: Malec "Come out. Please."

The door between them was a solid brick wall from another dimension, a wrench in the fabrics of the universe to keep them from ever even existing on the same plane. Magnus leaned against it with bated breath, waiting for any sign of life from the other side.

“Alec?” he whispered, his voice like the summer sky scorching dry across the desert. There was no response but a heavy breath, a sigh the whole universe took part in. “I- Can you come out? Please?”

Nothing. Silence as heavy as a hurricane, as eerie as lightning lacking thunder. An answer in and of itself, since the young man curled on the other side of the wall didn’t so much as twitch.

Just as Magnus’s hands began to tremble right along with the bond between them, piercing ruffles filled the air they breathed, the sound of cotton scratching against wood. There was nothing after that, nothing to fill the silence the warlock had held his breath to achieve, but it felt like an achievement none the less. He _got_ _up_. That was better than nothing, wasn’t it?

It was. It was progress, _good_ progress because Alec hadn’t left his loft since they’d returned from Alicante and hadn’t opened the bathroom door since screaming himself awake the night before. It was better than listening to him sob after the brother he’d never be able to bring back no matter how hard he wished for it, unable to even reach out and comfort him because there was a goddamn door in the way. And maybe Magnus could’ve just magicked his way inside, portalled or blown the door away entirely, but it felt too much like an invasion of his safety, his privacy - too much like a force he shouldn’t ever exert on someone lost in the process of grieving.

So, standing instead of being curled on the floor in an ocean of interminable tears was good. It was great. It was something.

Still, he couldn’t help the worry that dripped through like a whole different ocean when not a single sound followed. “Alec?”

A pause, long enough to have him wondering if maybe he'd crawled out the bathroom window to be alone or simply moved to the bathtub, away from the door and Magnus's tangent concern.

Then, "I'm fine." It was quiet, weak, full of tears and the twisting memories of a little boy's body burning in a fire made for grieving. Nevertheless, it was something.

Magnus let out a sigh of relief, leaning back against the door in his first moment of repose since waking to his boyfriend screaming whilst fending off some invisible force only hours before. “Okay,” he muttered, closing his eyes for a moment, taking a second to breathe.

Silence again, this time like the summer breeze flitting through stained white curtains, the winter snow falling softly to the trees. He could hear the moment it shifted, turning wild like the forest and desperate like the starving wolf. The moment Alec swallowed, heavy and loud as the voice he’d tried to use stuck in his throat for a pounding pause. The moment he took a deep, strained breath that broke on a sob and turned to press his face against the cold wooden door, just inches away from Magnus’s.

“I don’t want him to be gone,” he choked out, not even a whisper as it fluttered through the air like the ghost of a fragile butterfly. It hurt, landing on Magnus’s chest and burrowing deep into his heart with dull fangs and broken claws, more like a hunting falcon than a harmless insect.

“I know,” was all he had in him to say. What else was there? Magnus had only just lost his own brother (though perhaps he hadn't been as close to Ragnor as Alec was to Max), and he hadn’t had hundreds of years to learn how to grieve it. Hadn’t had a lifetime to learn how to comfort it. For the first time in a long time, all of this was new to him.

Alec laughed, a sound just as choked as his voice had been, and it carried through the barrier between them as a thread to grasp, fluttering over Magnus’s fingertips as though taunting him to take it. He did, letting out a dry chuckle of his own as the thread looped through his fingers in strings of promising red. Because anything was better than the crying, the screaming and the nightmares and the _itshouldhavebeenme._ It was something.

“How is anything supposed to be okay again? How is- How is anything ever going to be the same?” the shadowhunter muttered, questions like weights anchoring him to the other side of the wall.

“I don’t know,” Magnus murmured back, the answer like sunlight teasing across his skin. “Maybe it’s not. Maybe it shouldn't be.”

Alec snorted. Magnus smiled. The lock on the door clicked open.

It wasn't everything, but it was **something**.


End file.
